Sport-Commercial Photographic Service A SURF-CASTING TOURNAMENT International A MOTOR BOAT THAT CRUISES AT EXPRESS-TRAIN SPEED The fifty-foot cruiser Gar Jr. II won the cruiser championship at the recent regatta at Miami. After the races were over she started back for her home in Detroit via the Atlantic Ocean, the Hudson River, the Erie Canal, and the Great Lakes. She made the voyage from Miami to New York in 47 hours 23 minutes running time, 21 minutes faster than the elapsed time of the express train between these two points. The Gar Jr. II is equipped with two twelve-cylinder engines which develop a total of about 880 horse-power. Below decks she has all the comforts and conveniences required on a cruiser of her length. Automobilists who think that their gasoline bills are excessive are informed that this boat burns up one and one-half gallons of gasoline per mile, At top speed she can travel nearlv forty-five miles ha THE OUTLOOK'S SECOND PRIZE CONTEST “WHAT THE WORLD WAR DID TO ME” A HUMAN RECORD IN INTIMATE LETTERS OF THE SPIRITUAL UPHEAVAL AND A PARADE of sober introspection an old-fashioned mourners' bench. Super- second, with 43; Massachusetts entered marched to our doors in answer ficial patter was notably absent. The 37, Pennsylvania 35, Ohio 34, and Illi to our call for letters on the sub- serious note was powerfully sounded at nois 33. Forty-seven States and Canada ject of "What the World War Did to times; we had urged the contestants to were represented. Me." We asked our readers to tell us get down to realities, and they did, All kinds of people came to confesof the spiritual earthquakes that rever- often with morbid exactness, and asked sion. One was a rear-admiral of the berated through them during the con- that their names be not divulged. United States Navy; another was a jusflict, what scars the war inscribed upon But gloom and cynicism did not pre- tice of the Supreme Court of Kansas. their characters, what changes and dominate. Hundreds of letters were There were bank presidents and manusubtle reactions it caused. luminous with spiritual exaltation, and facturers, army officers and service men, The first of our prize contests called told in buoyant language of the depres- editors and laborers. College presidents, for criticisms of The Outlook, and re- sion and tension of the war. professors, students, and country schoolsulted in "amateurs' night” at the edi. A total of 544 contestants entered, teachers flocked to the contest. A portorial council table. The present contest against 401 who competed in the first trait painter portrayed what the war rapidly developed into a psychological contest. New York proved to be the had done to her; a Greenwich Village clinic. It was an extraordinary experi- most introspective State in the Union, art student abandoned her easel for her ence meeting that sometimes resembled entering 85 contestants. California was writing-pad; one letter came from the Friars' Club in New York, and one from Zion City; fiction writers left off writing stories to write us facts. A linotype operator dashed off a contribution on PRIZE CONTEST NUMBER TWO the typesetting machine. What The World War Did To Me YOU OU are a different man or woman from the one you were before August, 1914. The war caused deep and a first prize of Fifty Dollars a third prize of Tzcenty Dollars Search yourself for answers to these questions. Then write CONDITIOYS OF COTEST 2. All letters must be typewritten on one side of the paper only. 5. We reserve the right to purchase desirable letters not 6. Unavailable letters will not be returned. Address all contest letters to 381 Fourth Avenue, New York TOO INTIMATE EVEN FOR PEN XAME From New York's Tenderloin to remote prairie parsonages came these engrossing records of changes inflicted by the conflict. Metropolitan ministers and army chaplains wrote with candor that has never sounded from their pulpits. Physicians rolled their experiences into epistolary pills. A woman in Providence, Rhode Island, submitted a vigorous letter, and a few days later ordered it withdrawn from the contest and de stroyed, since it was "too intimate an admission to appear even over a pseudonym." Many thanked us for giving them an opportunity to write these letters; to express the inner turmoil helped them. Many put their emotions into original verse. Many, in their search for expression, quoted poets and others-nearly every one from Socrates to Irvin Cobb. They went to Browning, Burns, Wordsworth, Lamb, Cowper, Ruskin, and Kipling. They leaned upon Tolstoy, Mirabeau, Nietzsche, Goethe. The groping for adequate expression led to Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Abraham Lincoln, Lyman Abbott, Hermann Hagedorn, and Sinclair Lewis. Barrie and Hune ker were invoked. Sir Oliver Lodge was cited. Statements by Woodrow Wilson and President Harding were marshaled. If this contest has done nothing more, it has sent hundreds back to the poets. Browning's "God's in his heaven, all's right with the world” was quoted often THE OFFER est, with Sherman's "War is hell" a persistent second. BROMIDES VIE WITH REALITIES Many of the letters were remarkable for their genuineness. But the platitudinarians had their day. Such phrases as “vaunted civilization," "saw red," "flower of our manhood," and "torch of liberty" often bobbed familiarly into view. Some contestants, in their eagerness, forgot to write on the subject of the contest and submitted essays on Wilson's policies, discourses on the strategies of Foch, dissertations on political economy, theses on the Negro problem, and tabloid histories of civilization. The religious note was sounded in the majority of the letters; a note of bitter cynicism crept into others. Some confessed that the war drove them into the ministry; others, that the war drove them out of it. Hardened newspaper reporters described their passionate love of country. “Disappointingly unchanged," writes one of the few who experienced no spiritual earthquakes; another "never even mailed a letter to France." The war taught thrift, loyalty, patri. otism, courage, thoughtfulness, and sympathy. It taught geography and love of books. It made "citizens of the world." One contestant was stricken with apoplexy; another's hair turned white; some were infected with tuber. culosis. “It has made an American out of me," recurs repeatedly. Many learned for the first time in their lives to hate. "THE MIDNIGHT OF MY LIFE" us with candor of their faith that divine she was afraid to go downstairs after "I can no longer pray;" "For me the intervention would keep their sons and the lights were out, but that now she war will never be over;" “I am weary, husbands from falling in battle. goes all over in the dark and sometimes unhappy, restless, and adrift;" "It “It made me lose my interest in re- late at night she even goes “to the back robbed me of much of my capacity for ligion; the war stopped me from going porch to get something from the icesympathy, kindness, and love;" "I am to all places of amusement. When I see box." more nervous and my appetite for to people dancing, I feel like rebuking REALISM OF THE TRENCHES bacco, liquor, and the ladies has in them. ... It seems as though all the The reactions of men who were in the creased,” are various statements of ner feeling had been drained from every fighting are vividly portrayed. “Before vous depression. “This is the midnight thing else and had been embodied in me. the war," confides a Pennsylvanian, “the of my life,” says one whose business has I find I cannot get over the war. I am sight of blood made me shudder. ... gone to smash. “Things I once held morbid, grief-stricken, inconsolable," became an aviator, and watched, tigerdear are now pitifully cheap," expresses confesses one. like, all the movements of a group of the disillusionment of one writer. An anonymous New Yorker who wrote Germans, fondled tenderly the bomb in "Would my patriotism induce me to buy his contest letter on Hotel Claridge sta- my hands; my whole body trembled lest another Liberty Bond? Never!” writes tionery and claims to be the pastor of something untoward should turn up and one who has lost his faith in his coun- one of the largest metropolitan churches, spoil my kill." try. "The war pulled me up by the confesses that the war destroyed his be- "Had I not been afraid of the scorn roots; my health is shattered; I am an lief in God, his faith in Christ, in the of my brother officers and the scoffs of irritable pessimist. There are no holy Church, and in human nature, and my men, I would have fled to the rear," wars-no government has a right to bereft him of his belief in himself. “The confesses a Wisconsin officer, writing of draft a man to fight,” states another. war taught me to hate; it disjointed my a battle. “I see war as a horrible, grasp theology," writes a Cleveland clergyman. ing octopus with hundreds of poisonous, CONFESSIONS FROM CLERGYMEN "It furnished my heart with a proud sor- death-dealing tentacles tbat squeeze out Theologies were disrupted and rebuilt. sow," writes a Pennsylvania clergyman, the culture and refinement of a man," A Presbyterian minister writes: "Men whose son was killed in battle. “War, writes a veteran. of knotted hearts are not attracted by always futile, lacks purifying power and A regimental sergeant-major: “I coneasy things. Jesus has been thought of brings about no true progress," one con- sidered myself hard-boiled and acted the as 'dear' and 'precious' Jesus. And it testant laments. “We have lost the tone part toward everybody, including my has not appealed to.men. Men did not of our women. Mothers throw their wife. I scoffed at religion as unworthy follow a 'dear Lincoln, a 'dear' Roose- daughters at the heads of soldiers in an of a real man and a mark of the sissy velt, a 'dear' Foch, but men will follow ecstasy of patriotism,” complains an and weakling." Before going over the a rugged, granite, and majestic Christ." Atlanta woman. top for the first time he tried to pray, "For the first time in my life I One woman finds comfort in a knowl- but had even forgotten the Lord's learned that the greatest test of char- edge that her brother, wounded in the Prayer. acter is what we do when we know we war, is now at home nights instead of "If I get out of this, I will never be will not be found out,” concludes an- getting into entanglements. Another unhappy again,” reflected one of the conother Presbyterian minister. Many told naïvely confesses that before the war testants under shell fire in the Argan I on. Forest. To-day he is "not afraid of all foreigners in America and that he FIRST PRIZE dead men any more and is not in the hates the term "melting-pot," while a least afraid to die." Harvard Master of Arts admits that he “ DEATH BECAME A “I went into the army a conscientious can never be a good democrat again. FRIEND” objector, a radical, and a recluse. ... I From British Columbia: “We are a BY LEE RAMSDELL came out of it with the knowledge of small people living small lives in a farmen and the philosophy of beauty,” says off corner of the world. But for once we was in France in 1917-19, first workanother. lived. We can never be quite so small ing with the French refugees, then "My moral fiber has been coarsened. again." in American hospitals. I went there The war has blunted my sensitiveness to A Kansas woman was drawn into a snob. I got over it. The uniform was human suffering. In 1914 I wept tears strenuous Red Cross work by a letter the great leveler. For once we humans of distress over a rabbit which I had from a dying soldier urging her to carry looked into each other's eyes, not at shot. I could go out now at the com- An Illinois woman "learned to dic- each other's rags or Rolls-Royces. It mand of my Government in cold-blooded tate pamphlets and speeches while six was a liberal education. The fineness fashion and commit all the barbarisms typewriters banged about me. I came that existed in rough, uneducated men, of twentieth-century legalized murder," out of the war knowing how to work, the guts that developed in pampered writes a Chicago man. not only one day, but every day and all pets, was unbelievable. Now that it's A Denver man entered the war, lost day and all night if necessary.” A over, shall we be able to keep on seeing himself and God, and found manhood. Texas woman found that "it is terribly the man instead of the manicure? "I played poker in the box car which important to our Nation what the aver- Life, trouble, even death, seem less carried me to the front and read the age American woman thinks and feels." momentous than they did. The only Testament in the hospital train which "The war has brought the rest of the real calamity is not to meet life galtook me to the rear," he tells us. world to us, has given us the world for lantly. I remember the troop trains of "To disclose it all would take the our home, instead of 'Main Street,'” Americans hip-hurrahing past our hosgenius and the understanding of a god. I comes from North Dakota. pital on their way to the front, and the learned to talk from the side of my A Tacoma physician ably phrased the ambulance trains slipping quietly back mouth and drink and curse with the new sense of devotion to the home with them, very silent. A terrible Jugrest of our 'noble crusaders.' Authority which the war deeply impressed ipon gernaut had rolled over those eager infuriated me and the first suspicion of many. “The pathos of distance, almost boys; but had it crushed them? Not an order made me sullen and danger- as if by death, made me know that noth- they! They climbed on top and made it ous. . . . Each man in his crudeness and ing in life could take the place of home," carry them along! One man suffered lewdness nauseated me," writes a service he writes. “I learned that there are agonies for months in the hope of sar. man. unimaginable treasures of kindness and ing a shattered leg. His cot backed REACTIONS OF STAY-AT-HOMES goodness in men and women. . . . It re- against rough boards that smelled of vealed hidden traits of character in my Dakin Solution, and gas gangrene, and "When our boy came back," complains wife as fine as those of the heroines of fog from the muddy fields outside. But a mother, "we could hardly recognize for our strong, impulsive, loving son history." when he talked his room became a drawwhom we had loaned to Uncle Sam this The war drove in the lesson of thrift; ing-room, with sunshine pouring in, and irritable, restless, nervous man with de one “learned to eat horse-meat with apple blossoms. And when, months later fective hearing from shells exploding all relish." A Massachusetts woman“patched in Paris, I met him on crutches, the leg about him, and limbs aching and twitch. impossible B. V. D.’s.” “The war made gone, he joked about it until he fairly ing from strain and exposure, and with us out-grandmother our grandmothers in persuaded us that he was glad to have that inevitable companion of all returned point of thrift," claims one. A Rhode the thing off. And I can still see a young oversea boys, the coffin-nail, between his Island woman discovered that skill in French convalescent, his right sleeve teeth." than cake-making counted for more empty to the shoulder, swinging past us down the Champs, so erect and debonair “In the army I found that hard familiarity with the classics. “It taught the dignity of old clothes," recurs often. that I almost envied him that badge of drinkers and fast livers and profanetongued men often proved to be the "The war doubled my income within honor. of such metal were our armies. the last twelvemonth and is going to kindest-hearted, squarest friends And, lastly, I came to realize that double it again within the next few death was not the end. could ever have," one woman reports. Oh, yes, I “'You lost an arm?' asked a woman of years," boasts a South Dakotan. learned it as a child; but when my father Many women were enriched spiritu- died I only knew that he was gone, a soldier. "No, I gave it,' he returned, proudly. If patriotism can breed such ally by discovering something to do. blown out like a candle. Where? Who One of them now runs "a restaurant knew? No one. Death was a solitary, an answer from a man who has known the hell of blood and exploding shells, for undernourished children and a club terrifying thing. But in France it be where sixty young aliens nightly meet came a friend. Poor tortured boys would then war must have some soul-growing men and women of broader opportunity. feel a blessed surcease from pain and process," she concludes. Numerous letters came from women The war has shown me my work and look up to find the Great Physician at whose husbands or sons were killed in trained me for it. Thousands have had their side, bringing merciful rest and battle. One wife lost her soldier-hus the same experience,” she declares. the supreme healing. Death was a daily An amazing record of changed lives commonplace. Lads were here to-day band to a French girl; a poignant com is this pile of chronicles of the war. It and to-morrow gone, but their spirits panion letter describes the tragedy of a soldier who returned home to find his is a startling panorama of what war were too young and alive and vivid to does to the human spirit. It contains vanish with the body, even after we wife devoted to another man and lost enough plots for a shelf of novels. had seen the flag-draped coffins lowered to him. One remarkable thing about these 544 into the ground at “Taps." They were SOCIAL BARRIERS VANISH letters is the fact that they disclose so close and real that at times I felt Friendship thrived as the result of the that so many people are able to write that I had more friends in the unseen war. A North Carolina woman became with candor and vitality about them- world than in this. It sounds silly, but acquainted with every white person and selves. They reveal, on the whole, a it's true. . . . And so, when I came home nearly every colored one in her town. breaking away from traditions of and my own mother died I did not lose ship. One left her snobbishness in the thought and conduct, a concern her, as I had my father. She sits in first hospital ward she entered. Judging with realities, an escape from ruts, a the sunny east window with her mend. from these letters, there are enormous more rugged sense of comradeship with ing, or we stroll together in the garden quantities of snobbishness on America's one's fellows. These letters reveal a and I cry: "Mother, see how lovely side-tracks for which there is no further diminished respect for conventional in- your roses are, but what ails those But exceptions are also noted. One stitutions and heightened respect for sweet peas? What would you do with iss the war has ruined his respect for men and women. them?” During her sickness her little one new use. ence. W world was bound by four walls, with answers to the other four questions may THIRD PRIZE perhaps a bit of blue sky or a bird song be inferred. through the window, and the rest pain. 6 THE GOLD-WREATHED What did the war give me? Why, But I was well and free to go where I friendliness. Like most of us, up to 1916 CURS" pleased, to breathe the fresh air and see I lived in a small inclosure of family and BY KATHERINE CARR' WILSON the moon rise, and speak with friends family friends. There were others outwho came to inquire. I was in and out side, I realized, whom it was pleasant to This is my most lasting war experiof her room all day, but often she did meet, but whom I seldom did meet, livnot know it. Now our positions are re- ing busy and content inside my wall. There was a set of gold and white versed. It is she who is well and free; Then came the Red Cross saying, “The cups in the window of a fascinating who has found the ones she lost so need in Europe is greater than your shop on the Rue St. Honoré and the many weary years ago, who sees beau feeble imaginations can grasp. Work." dark-eyed man in the doorway assured ties beyond my imagination. My life I was not too busy to resist that call, me that they were truly a "find"must seem as cramped and restless as her nor were others in my town. We got Napoleon's own china; witness the gold sick-room did to me. Yet she is in and together, and labored. From every class wreaths and the "N." So I made an out all the time often when I don't know and clique we came, making friends ac- engagement with a friend who had been it, I dare say. She has never left me. cording to our temperaments, not bound a collector in the days before the war. These are some of the things the war by our family inheritances. So the war Saturday afternoon we would go and taught me, and the last is the greatest. gave me friendliness for my town, in- look at "my" cups. How I wanted them! stead of for two or three streets in it. I looked at my bank account, and I sat I can talk as an equal now to my fish. down to write to my husband for a little SECOND PRIZE man and laundress, because I nursed the more money. I was still writing when - MEMORIES OF THE wife of one through influenza and re- out went the lights, I heard madame the ceived countless favors from the other. proprietress's voice giving shrill orders FINEST COMRADESHIP" But learning to love my community to madame the concierge, and strange BY JAMES V. HICKEY was only the beginning. The war swept dull bangs began to be heard across the me to Europe, where I grew to love my river. I opened my third-story window CORPORAL, 23RD INFANTRY country. When I came home, I was no and looked out. Clear in the sky were E were sitting on the barracks' longer a New England Yankee, but the the red and green signal lights of the steps the other evening, some of new kind that reaches from coast to avions, and strange white lights bloomed us who had been overseas together, coast and embraces Irish, Italians, Jews for a moment like flowers. "Come up talking or in silence watching what was --yes, even Germans of the brand that here!" called the girl two floors above, left of a Texas sunset. The talk had wore our uniform loyally. There is a and I groped my way back through my all been of the wars and rumors of war new map of the United States in my room and up the stairs. There were in Europe, recalcitrant Germany, and heart now, which is dotted with the four other girls there, and we all hung the possibility of trouble with Japan; habitations of my friends. Brooklyn crowded in the small window watching all sacrifices had been in vain; the used to be merely a standby of the comic and listening to the dull roars. It was world was the same old world, and the papers to me; to-day it is an absorbing the first raid over Paris! It was a men left in France had, at most, but spot of drama enacted by those I love. crazy thing for us to lean out of the furnished political issues through which Sandcoulee looms larger than Butte or window, and in later raids we knew bet. pot-bellied politicians had once more Denver whenever I write to the brave ter. Also perhaps in later raids we got their feet in the trough; we are man who lives there. There are Merid- became more fearful; but this first heroes no more, only Regulars. ian, York, Portland, St. Louis, Musco- night I think I can say that not one of But each in his heart knew that for gee, and a score of other places where us was frightened. One of the Y girls him the war had not been in vain; that I go in and out in spirit, get discour- kept saying, “Oh, damn them!” I from it had come to him memories of aged, cheer up, marry, raise a family, watched the lights go up and up and the finest comradeship that ever the break out with measles, recover-and all found myself thinking a sort of wordselfish earth has seen and the conscious through the agencies of the men who less prayer for the safety of our men. ness of duty done to the utmost. The taught me to be slow in judgment, open And all of a sudden the white and war has given to America a new aris of mind, appreciative of good, and pa- gold cups flashed through my mind. tocracy: an aristocracy prouder of its tient rather than condemning evil. Were they all smashed? And I didn't possessions than is any aristocracy of Nor was the gift of my town and my birth or wealth, and its treasure is country all. The war gave me another Saturday afternoon A-spoke of inalienable. Pre-war promises may never home in France. Despite barriers of our engagement to look at the cups. “I be fulfilled; bonuses may be voted down language, in spite of little opportunity, don't want them," I said. He looked and the war become only a topic to bore I learned enough of the French to ad- politely incredulous. But it was true. those who battened on it; but our great mire them and desire their good will, I had known since the night of the raid reward shall be with us as long as we and enough of France to think it the sec- that I did not want any more things. live and to our children's children long ond most beautiful country in the world. I wanted the war to end and to give us after we are gone: memories of the ten. What, then, did the war take away? back our homes in safety and happiness. derness of great, strong comrades, and Easy optimism–I have to fight for the It did not matter whether there were the almost intoxicating thought, "I have optimism I own now; and a clear per- gold cups in all our drawing-rooms. stood among men and faced hell let ception of right and wrong, as there is Well, a year or so later I came home loose and did not flinch!" no doubt that my standards are more happy and safe, but I still remembered confused than they used to be; then, the gold-wreathed cups, and it was with willingness to efface myself for the com- something of a shock that I saw my THIRD PRIZE fort of others, for my temper is quicker friends settling down to the old way of than it once was; but, principally, my putting their "faith and hope" of happi6 NO LONGER A NEW old conception of death as an evil thing. ness in the same old things. I don't ENGLAND YANKEE" Those 36,000 graves at Romagne, the mean that I don't want gowns and nice BY "ALICE I. STEVENS” memory of the friend whom I laughed dressy things as much as any one; but with in the morning and buried in the · when I want them even a great deal the IVE questions such as you propound afternoon, these have made of death only gold cups are likely to flash through my can hardly be answered in six hun. an incident in an unending flow of life. mind-the symbol that taught me the dred words; but to the third, "What did Yes, the war did change me; it did small value of material things. Wouldn't the war add [to you]—what did it take bring me spiritual upheavals and subtle we all be happier as a country if we away?" the reply is clear in my mind. reactions. But whether I am better for would remember these hard lessons of Perhaps from my statement of it the it or worse I could not possibly decide. the war? care. F |
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